Mama Stalks the Past (18 page)

For a moment, nobody said anything.

“Mama,” I finally said, “I hate to bring this up, but I’ve got to go back to work in two days. Sidney isn’t going to let me talk him into any more emergency vacation days.”

“I understand,” Mama said. But I thought I heard a little melancholy in her voice.

“It’s going to be hard for me to work knowing that a killer is on the loose in town and you’re at the top of his hit list.”

“Don’t worry about Candi,” Daddy told me. “She’ll be all right.”

Easier said than done, I thought. “Do you have any idea of who is at the bottom of these murders?” I asked Mama.

Mama’s face changed. Her familiar expression said a light had flickered on in her mind—Candi Covington was on to something. When she spoke, though, her tone was doubtful. “There’s a
thought that keeps surfacing, but I can’t find a place for it,” she said.

“How about sharing that thought with us?” I asked, glancing toward my father. I felt better. Despite what she had just said, I knew that my Mama had at last found a thread that would lead her to the answers and maybe defuse the talk that was sure to spread about Hannah Mixon’s putting Mama in her will.

“I keep thinking,” Mama said, “that the person who bargained with Reeves to kill Hannah and Nat knew how much that property was worth before he struck the deal.”

“Trudy Paige might have stumbled onto that information,” I said.

“Abe is doing a poor job in finding that woman, and I’ve got a mind to tell him so!” Daddy snapped.

“Now, James,” Mama said gently. “Abe’s doing his best. And as for Trudy knowing about the Mixon land, I suppose it’s possible.” Her expression was troubled.

“It wouldn’t be hard for her to find out about it,” I pointed out. “All she’d have to do is check the county tax records the same as I did.”

“I suppose,” Mama murmured. “But Nat didn’t know about that land until
after
Hannah’s will was read, remember?”

“We all know that Nat was one short of a six-pack,” Daddy said.

“He didn’t know much of anything,” I agreed.

“I suppose it’s possible Trudy found out about the land, but there still has to be a link from her to Reeves, and—” Mama stopped in the middle of her sentence.

My father and I waited but Mama didn’t say any more. “Speaking of Reeves,” I said. “I guess I should page Kilroy, tell him that we’ve found Reeves.”

“Good idea,” Daddy said as he headed for the front door. “I’ll see you two later.”

Mama sighed.

Half an hour later, Kilroy returned my call. “We’ve found Reeves’s corpse,” I told him.

He sighed. “That explains why I can’t find him,” he said.

“He was dead even before somebody tried to poison Mama,” I said. “Long before I hired you.”

Kilroy sighed again. You could tell he’d really hoped Reeves Mixon was our killer. “I’ve learned one more thing,” he said. “Don’t know how much good it’ll do you, though.”

“What’s that?”

“The person who took Reeves from the hospital six months ago to take care of him …”

“Yeah?”

“It was a relative.”

My heart beat a little faster. “Male or female?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Just know that Reeves told one of the other patients that one of his kinfolk was going to take care of him.”

I took a deep breath. “Mama would be interested to hear that,” I said before I hung up the phone.

“I think,” Mama said, after I had told her what Kilroy had told me about Reeves, “I’m going to invite Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls for supper tomorrow.”

“Mama, you know what those women think about you. Now that the will has become public knowledge, they’re probably spreading all kinds of lies about you,” I protested.

“Simone, I need to know a little more about the Mixon family, and there’s nobody in this county that knows more about its residents, alive or dead, than Annie Mae Gregory, Sarah Jenkins, and Carrie Smalls!”

T
he next afternoon, Mama’s dining room table was set with the handmade crocheted tablecloth. The china and crystal were from Germany. My father had gotten them for her when he was on one of his Air Force tours, before he retired. Rodney had sent the silver from New York for our parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. He’d also talked Will into buying the matching serving pieces and coffeepot.

Mama loved setting a beautiful table.

The food: turkey and corn bread dressing, cranberry sauce, fried chicken, string beans mixed with new potatoes, rice, collard greens, yellow squash, fried okra, succotash, corn bread. For dessert there was red devil cake and coconut
cream pie. My mouth watered, just looking at the array in the kitchen.

Despite the tension Mama felt about what these women were doing to her reputation, when Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls arrived at our house, they sat at a table designed to reward them for the information they were willing to share.

Carrie Smalls was dressed in a tailored black dress with a lace collar. Her long hair draped her shoulders. Annie Mae Gregory wore gray, a long, flowing polyester dress that accented her large frame. Her piercing eyes shone. Tonight, she kept a Cheshire cat smile on her face during the meal
and
she kept talking with food in her mouth.

Sarah Jenkins had on a two-piece navy blue suit. Her white blouse had tiny white buttons down the front of it.

Clearly, all three women were dressed for a feast. I could only hope Mama wouldn’t be their main course.

Daddy and I wisely kept silent. At first Mama, seated at the foot of the table, spoke in an officiating manner that was unnatural, like she was making a speech. “I wanted to thank you ladies for visiting me while I was in the hospital.”

The three women stared, like they didn’t know the Candi Covington who was talking to them.
Then Annie Mae Gregory spoke. “It was nasty of somebody to try to kill you, especially after Hannah willed you all her property,” she said, grinning.

Sarah Jenkins leaned forward. “I don’t believe I know anybody who was
almost
killed. Most folks either get killed or—”

Mama took a deep breath like she was mustering up courage to go on with her dinner. Then she opened her mouth to say something. But Annie Mae Gregory, who now had a piece of turkey hanging from the side of her mouth, beat her to it. “My God, Candi, what kind of Christian woman are you? How could you have accepted Hannah’s land?”

Mama was in a terrible dilemma; for an instant she actually seemed lost for words. She needed to get information from these women, but she didn’t like the idea of having to defend herself against their questions. The thought that she might have hurt somebody seemed too much for her. I could see that she was biting back the impulse to argue, the strong desire to set these noisy women straight. But when she answered Annie Mae Gregory, her voice was impressively unemotional. “I haven’t done anything to anybody,” she said evenly.

Annie Mae Gregory’s fat jaws shook like
Jell-o. “You know folks are saying you talked Hannah into giving you her land.”

Mama struggled to maintain her grace and poise. But I saw defiance spark in her eyes. “That’s just not true,” she told Annie Mae.

Frail Sarah Jenkins swallowed a tiny mouthful of collard greens. “That’s what people are saying. Course we ain’t saying we agree with them, but you know, where there’s smoke there’s fire!”

I shifted in my seat because I could see that Mama was about to lose her temper. I decided to change the conversation before she did. “I suppose you ladies heard about Hannah’s stepson,” I said.

Now, all three women stared at me. “No.” Sarah Jenkins rubbed her chest like she might have indigestion. “What happened to the boy?”

“The sheriff found Reeves Mixon dead yesterday,” I told her, delighted that I had knowledge they didn’t yet have. “He was in the old house on the Mixons’ homestead.”

The women sat up straight, their fingers laced tightly on top of the tablecloth. “I declare,” Sarah said.

“Tell us all about it,” Annie Mae said.

I felt a burst of energy, like something productive was really going to come out of this meal. Sarah Jenkins began rubbing her stomach, trying to make herself belch. Mama got up and
went into the kitchen. When she came back, she seemed to have regained her composure. “Candi,” Sarah Jenkins said when Mama had sat back down, “did I tell you that I’ve got high blood pressure?”

“You told me about your heart problem,” Mama told Sarah. “When did you find that out about your blood pressure?”

“Dr. Clark told me day before yesterday. Course I knew it all the time!”

Mama smiled a little but said that she was very sorry to hear it. “My ankles swell, my feet hurt, and I get these headaches,” Sarah Jenkins continued. Carrie Smalls glared at her.

Mama took a deep breath. “I know you ladies told me that Hannah’s people are dead—”

“Died out like most people right after the war,” Sarah Jenkins said heartily.

“I was wondering about her husband’s people,” Mama went on. “She had four husbands, didn’t she?”

“What do you want to know about them?” Carrie Smalls asked.

“I was wondering whether any of her husbands had children by another woman?” Mama asked.

There was a momentary silence.

“None that we know of,” Sarah said, looking back and forth between the two other ladies.

“Like we told you, Hannah’s first husband died young. Her second husband spent too much time gambling to do much of anything,” Sarah Jenkins declared.

“It surprised everybody when Hannah turned up pregnant with Nat,” Annie Mae Gregory said.

“Her third husband, Richard Wescot, never fathered no children himself, though his brother Claude had his share,” Carrie Smalls said.

Mama looked interested. “How many children did Claude have?” she asked. There was a glint in her eyes.

“Two girls,” Carrie Smalls said promptly.

“Betsy Wescot married a Fennell boy from Low Branch. The other girl never married,” Sarah Jenkins said.

“Betsy still in Low Branch?” I asked.

“Betsy got killed in a car wreck last year,” Carrie Smalls snapped, like that was information I should have known.

Annie Mae Gregory looked past me, or at least I think she did. She tilted her head in the way that makes her look a little cross-eyed. “I watched those girls grow up. Me and their Mama, Josie, use to pick peas on Old Man Parker’s place some years ago.”

Annie Mae mashed potatoes and string beans together into a mush, then stuffed a wad in her
mouth. “Betsy was all right but that Raven, people said she wasn’t wrapped too tight. Something wrong with her brains from birth, I think.”

Carrie Smalls broke in, her fork poised in midair, another wad of mashed food on its tips. “Now, Annie Mae, I heard that about Raven but I knew that girl. She had a problem, but she wasn’t as crazy as most folks made her out to be.”

Annie Mae Gregory chuckled. “I declare, Carrie. If what people say is true, that girl set fires to her own house, and killed dogs and cats.”

Carrie Smalls frowned in honest defense of the gossip against the Wescot girl. “I talked to Abe and her people about that, and they told me that one of Michael’s boys set those fires,” she insisted. “And those animals, they died a natural death!”

Annie Mae Gregory’s eyes widened and I could have sworn that she looked embarrassed. She wasn’t used to a contradictory story. “Since you keep disputing anything I say and you claim you know that girl,
you
talk!” she snapped at Carrie. “I might as well keep my mouth shut!”

She didn’t, though; she stuffed more string beans and mashed potato into it, instead.

Carrie Smalls threw Annie Mae Gregory a contemptuous look, but went on eating and didn’t answer.

For a time, nobody said anything.

“Candi, get me some Epsom salts,” Sarah Jenkins said.

Mama left the room again. When she returned she carried the box of Epsom salts and a large glass of water. We all watched Sarah Jenkins take a heaping spoonful of salts, watched her drink the entire glass of water. She belched, then reached immediately for another big helping of collards and corn bread.

Carrie Smalls’s eyes darkened. She had some feeling for this girl. There was something about her she liked. “Raven used to come to my house when she was a young miss, used to write letters for me, read my mail for me, things like that. Mind now, it’s true she had a strangeness about her, but I watched her grow out of that.”

Pain flickered across Sarah Jenkins’s narrow face like lightning. Her chest seemed to tighten, her shoulders shook a little. After the spasm had passed, she nipped a piece of corn bread between her thumb and index finger. “People said Raven was spooked. Said a gypsy marked her when she was a child.”

Carrie Smalls sat up straighter. “People say that ’bout anybody they don’t understand. That girl needed somebody to take up time with her, that’s all!”

For a while nobody said anything more. The
women were preoccupied with their heaping plates of food.

My father, who had wisely been silent for most of the meal, emptied his glass of wine with one swallow, and then poured himself another, “Does Raven live around here?” he asked casually.